


Let Old Things Die

by NeonAppleDarko



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Deserved Better, F/M, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gift Fic, Gift of Life, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Temporary Character Death, most likely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeonAppleDarko/pseuds/NeonAppleDarko
Summary: Ben is more than willing to give his life to save her. He knows when he takes what Rey taught him and uses it that there isn't any coming back. It's hurts to think of leaving her behind but he knows that she won't be alone.What he doesn't know is he isn't, either.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	Let Old Things Die

**Author's Note:**

> I may have gotten what I expected from the movie, but my best friend was devestated by the end of Ben's character arc in The Rise of Skywalker, so it was time to dust off the ol' fanfic writing gloves. This is an attempt to just give her something to make her happy which she so richly deserves. So I hope you like this Djali, I know that it isn't going to fix it but if it makes you smile then it's worth it. I love you!

_

There were voices in his head. There always had been. Voices that were not his own, voices he did not recognize, voices of family and those that he feared. Snoke, Darth Vader, the Emperor. Voices that grew into a violent cacophony so loud that he nearly drowned in the depth of them consumed with the need to crush Palpatine for his opposition. All cut off so suddenly the moment his mother’s voice called for him and his own lightsaber is ignited into his abdomen. A deafening silence that was almost more frightening than any of the growling thoughts that had filled the space before. He looked to Rey covered in mist from Endor’s thrashing seas in some kind of stunned wonder unable to quite believe the quiet. It’s peaceful here somehow, the moment of his death. He’d seen it in nightmares and daydreams thousands of times before in a hundred different ways. Each more vicious or horrifying than the last, but this was so calm. Rey had ended him and it was calm.

Except she was crying. Pain washed through him sure as the waves surrounding the ruins of his grandfather’s empire. He wanted to reach for her then but he couldn’t. Everything in him was shutting down, he could even track the way life was flowing out of him if he so chose but he didn’t. It would mean looking away from her face.

With care he didn’t expect Rey put his lightsaber down on the broken metal surface beneath them, moving over to put her hand on his injury. A shock rolled through him to feel a force travel from her fingertips into his body, similar to the one he felt to rip the necklace from her collar, a sensation that ran parallel in real time and the bond between them. Her life was draining. His body was healing. Rey sat back on her haunches only the sound of the sea rushing around them. Even under all the noise he could hear her clearly.

“I did want to take your hand.” Tears dripped from her jaw, mingling with the sea spray. “I wanted to take Ben’s hand.”

She saved him. Through the bond they shared he felt the agony of her struggle and his own conflict echoing back to him. An unbroken cord of warmth through which her feelings shone bright. There was nothing he could do, nothing could make him move in that moment. Ben Solo sat there shaken on the ruined beams of the second Death Star staring as she took his ship and fled with everything she needed to find her way to her grandfather. Wondering how she could heal him. How could she still want him after that?

Ben didn’t pay attention to time passing. The Falcon came to collect the stragglers that followed them onto the planet killer’s ruins but paid him no mind, so Rey’s allies must not have seen him after the blow that should have ended him. Slowly he pulled himself to his feet difficult not for his body but for the weight that lay heavy on his shoulders and in his heart.

At the edge of the ruins Ben stood trying desperately to gather himself into a semblance of functionality, reaching out for his mother through the force but knowing he’d never feel her again. What responded he’d never know if it was a hallucination brought on by his conflicted mind or a memory somehow made solid by the force. His father Han looking at him with nothing but kindness just as he had the day he died. The day Ben had killed him. He’d never forgive himself, not really, but seeing him gave him something. Gave him just enough that Ben knew what he had to do, where he had to go. He didn’t need the wayfinder to find his way home.

“Dad…” The wisp of his father’s memory smiles at him.

“I know.”

Heart aching, determined, Ben Solo leaves behind the regret and agony. Leaves Kylo Ren in the ruins of the weapon once captained by his grandfather and bounds across the broken struts to find what he knows will be there.

All he needs is a ship.

_

Clinging desperately to the rocky cliff face of what could be called a ventilation shaft is the first time that Ben hears the voice of his grandfather. Not the heavy medical sound of Darth Vader’s words but that of Anakin Skywalker, the man before he was turned into the corrupted dragon of the Sith Emperor. Blue light blazed all around brightened by the terrifying blasts of force generated lightning Palpatine threw out inside the throne room of the Sith Eternal. The very ground was shaking, Ben was terrified, but he climbed the walls inch by pitiful inch. Shouting wordlessly into the dark to reach Rey but drowned out by the battle that raged without him present. A misplaced step and he’s sliding back down the wall and to oblivion, but a hand grabs him from just over a ledge. A ghostly visage he doesn’t recognize but knows in his heart is his grandfather when he looks down at him.

“I failed my family more than can be forgiven.” The force ghost whispers, form weak in the dark but grip enough to let Ben get his foothold once more. “I won’t fail them again.”

Screams ripped through the air, both Rey’s and Emperor Palpatine, shrieks and crackling lightning that tear through Ben like he was the one struck. Their bond is weakened from where Sidious had ravaged it to rejuvenate his own power, but he can still feel her. A blip of strength and heat that fills the hollow in his chest while he climbs that flares in a building crescendo until abruptly it shrinks into a rapidly cooling ember.

Rey is gone.

He’s reached the edge, all the air gone from his lungs exhausted not only from the climb but the taunt pull of their bond. It’s tenuous threatening to snap from the strain. Ben can hardly recall the walk over to her, only how it felt to gather Rey into his arms and hold her. The force between them barely holding on. A single thread bolstered by the life that she had given him. Life he realized he could still return.

Cradling her around the back Ben pulled up enough to put a hand on her abdomen, a mirror of the very spot she’d struck him through with his own lightsaber. With a deep breath he reached out with the force and seized the dying ember pouring heat into it until he could feel her spark again. It left him breathless, weak and heavy limbed, but he didn’t stop. Not when he began to feel faint, not when his vision began to go. No he only stopped when Rey took his hand.

“Ben?”

She gathered him into her arms, shock and relief plain on her face and he fell into her embrace laughing so softly he almost didn’t make a sound. He felt impossibly light to look upon her smiling wide with tears clouding his eyes. Neither of them could say who moved first but they met there in the middle, kiss chaste and long but everything that he never knew he wanted. Is this what joy felt like? It had been so long.

The weakness began to overtake him. He could see concern flicker in Rey’s eyes but couldn’t hear if she said anything. Ben Solo closed his eyes smile still touching his lips even as he began to fall. An emptiness began to bloom in her heart where their bond sat anchored. Collapsing in upon itself as he started to fade away. Still so weak from her brush with the end Rey scrambled after him, shouting when he slipped through her fingers.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Arms caught him, wrapped tight around his shoulders from behind, just as she gripped his wrist. A soft muted blue glow illuminated the little color that returned to his face as Leia Organa knelt on the crumbling stone of Exegol with her son in her arms. White hooded robes that Rey had never seen her wear shining like starlight and framing her beautiful face. Her form flickered as she put a hand over his heart, nimble fingers reaching up to push the sweat dried hair from Ben's face.

"I knew you had it in you.” Looking up she gave her a soft, reassuring smile. “We can't change where we came from, Rey, but we can always change where we go." Leia's voice wavered growing weaker as she poured the energy that kept her there with them, kept her alive as part of the force, into her son to keep him alive. The air shimmered next to them then Luke knelt down beside his sister, arm whole once more where he threw it over her shoulders to give her his strength, hand over hers on Ben’s chest.

“And you don’t have to do it alone.” Leia visibly brightened and laid her head on her brother’s shoulder. Rey clutched at her chest where the emptiness Ben had nearly left behind began to draw on her own strength once again.

“It isn’t too late. You’ve found your family, Rey. We won’t let you be alone again.” A togruta woman wreathed in white knelt at her side and put her arms around her. The stark facial markings blazed intense through the blue glow of her form. Though Rey did not recognize Ahsoka Tano she knew she’d felt her calling her name when all the Jedi had given her their strength just as she now gave it willingly to support her. Ahsoka looked off to the side and said with a smile, “Isn’t that right, Master?”

Anakin had stood nearby watching with fear bright in his eyes. Afraid to get close, afraid to hope. Then Ben shuddered and he moved toward the family he’d failed so long ago. He had fallen willingly into the open arms of the darkside, there had been no doubt for Anakin Skywalker once the seed Darth Sidious in the guise of Sheev Palpatine had planted began to bloom. He had turned to the dark to save the brightest thing in his own universe but she died anyway. She gave birth to their children then in her anguish, not even the force could sustain her. Now here was the son of his daughter, Leia’s boy, who Sidious had whispered to from the moment he’d begun to toddle. Using many voices to sew darkness in his heart, some that had even mimicked Anakin’s own. Young Ben who managed to renounce the darkside in much the same way he had done before him, to give the love of his life the tools she needed to defeat the Emperor in true finality. To save her before giving himself to the force in her stead.

The man that had been Darth Vader set his hand atop his children’s. Sharing what was left of his life force with the grandson he never got to know.

“He wanted to finish what I started.” Anakin’s voice trembled, dust and rubble scattered along the throne room floor quaked underneath them, eyes misty and far away on the memory of how he’d died. Held in the arms of the son now kneeling across from him. 

“Finish, he did.” Still leaning on his cane Yoda came up to Luke’s side and placed a hand at his elbow.

“There will be nothing for Sidious to cling to any longer, no life unnatural that he will be able to find. He is gone.” A hand gripped Anakin’s shoulder, sharing with him the pride he felt for a child that once he may have called his nephew. A boy that bore his name. Who for love and for the light he had been willing to give his life to preserve. Obi-wan was truly so proud of how far he had come, of all the descendants of his apprentice.

“He did, didn’t he?” Anakin wept openly and smiled.

While the powerless Star Destroyers of the Final Order began to rain down surface of Exegol Ben woke with a soft inhale, the only sound that mattered to Rey who laughed and cried with relief. Looking up his brows pinched together and with wonder he whispered, “...mom?”

“Welcome home.” Tears gleamed where they tracked down Leia’s cheeks. Landing on his uniform shirt and shining where they caught in his hair. She kissed his forehead then gently, almost playfully, shoved him into Rey’s open arms. “Now get out of here you two.”

One by one the ghosts of the Jedi faded back, unable to hold their forms after so much spent energy. Later on Rey might feel badly that she hadn’t paid attention to them but now it didn’t matter. She clung tightly to Ben and laughed, feeling lighter than she had in the entire year they were apart. Marveling at the sound of his barely there laughter while he clung back just as hard.

“I thought you were gone! For one dark moment I thought I’d be alone all over again.” Rey pulled back and cupped his face between her hands. He shook his head, setting his hand over one of hers, dark eyes shining.

“You’re not alone.” All around them the auditorium began to crumble.

“And neither are you!” She laughed and kissed his smiling lips, “Never again!”

Ben rose on unsteady feet pulling her up by the arm as he went. Side by side they ran leaving the darkness behind them. Filling the air of Exegol with bouts of joy and laughter that Rey was unable to contain. Together they piled into the old X-Wing, callsign Red Five, and fled the dying planet. Ben’s arms wrapped firmly around her.

-

The sands of Tatooine were darker and warmer than those of Jakku. Lit brightly by the two stars the planet orbited, fraternal twins of orange and scarlet.

Ship at her back Rey crept up upon the ruins of the Lars’ family moisture farm where Anakin and Luke Skywalker had spent their childhoods. A place that had fallen to ruin after the last of their family were taken from them by the old Empire. Now it remained half reclaimed by desert sands almost like a memorial. A quiet marker nearly hidden in the earth. She took the time to explore the rooms and pieces she could still see. Giving the place a silent goodbye before she climbed back out to the surface and set Anakin’s lightsaber down. Asking Tatooine to open for her.

“Who are you?”

An old woman with her mount, a large pack animal she didn’t recognize, had crept up on the plot of land while Rey waited for the sands to take the last remaining piece of Anakin deep into the earth. A place of rest. She asked her question and for a moment Rey’s thoughts lingered on a name she wasn’t sure if she had the right to use. Looking up amidst the sand the glimmering forms of Luke and Leia took shape arm in arm, his smile filled with mischief and hers with knowing and warmth.

Rey turned away from them to follow their gaze past the abandoned moisture farm. The Falcon sat far enough away to give the space she needed. From his seat on the drop ramp Finn saw her looking their direction and waved with a soft nervous smile while Poe snipped at Chewbacca who repeated his words back. Tone mockingly higher pitched even at a distance while he waved a heavy wrench in the direction of the Resistance pilot. Near the edge of the farm where sand spilled into the homestead stood Ben Solo looking awkward while he shifted from one foot to the other. Almost small in a pair dark pants and a loose white shirt that Chewie had salvaged for him from the depths of his own belongings. His mother’s lightsaber, built by her hand, holstered at his hip. She could feel him reaching through the bond, his quiet need to be beside her yet wanting to give her all the space she needed. He froze when he caught her eye, a smile breaking through the flush on his unscathed face that Rey returned. Now knowing the answer she wanted to say was true. At her feet BB-8 trilled, leaving a winding trail in the sand as circled her.

“Rey Solo.” She gave the woman a nod farewell, hurried footsteps carrying her back to him and her family with their droid rolling swiftly just behind.

_


End file.
